The China Syndrome Do you remember the 1979 Jane Fonda and Jack Lemmon movie, The China Syndrome? It was about a cover-up at a nuclear power facility that was malfunctioning and creating a nuclear hazard. I’m not sure how much we Americans have thought about either nuclear disaster or even China as a risk to our lifestyle since then, but we are about to be faced with a whole new version of China risk than…
Vacancy If you grew up in the 60s like I did and you got the opportunity to take road trips, also like I did, then one of the icons of your travels was seeing the signs at the various motels that you passed that blinked NO (or not) before the word VACANCY. If business was good at the motel, the NO was lighted and you presumably knew not to bother to stop and ask if…
Writing on Retirement Among the several categories into which I place my blog stories, I include retirement. I’ve had a fascination with retirement for 30 years, ostensibly, because I ran one of the largest retirement businesses in the world. That stint caused me to spend many hours, contemplating the idea of retirement as exemplified in the vast of Defined Benefit and Defined Contribution pension plans that were part of my business domain. You simply cannot…
Discovery and Rediscovery I’m now back on May hilltop and after a very comfortable 8 hours of sleep in my own bed and a wake-up call from Buddy standing on my shoulder to lick my face, I am pleased to be in rediscovery mode this morning. The most important news this morning is that I managed to lose 8 pounds during my three weeks away. I suspect this was through a combination of eating Asian…
Super Tuesday What’s so special about this Tuesday? I mean that in the most holistic sense, knowing full well that we all recognize that Super Tuesday is the big early primary sweepstakes of the presidential primary season. There are fifteen states in play in both the Republican and Democratic Party races (for the Republicans: AK, AL, AR, CA, CO, MA, ME, MN, NC, OK, TN, TX, UT, VA, and VT, and for the Democrats: AL,…
Paying the Piper WRITTEN BEFORE OUR SE ASIA TRIP Donald Trump is on the campaign trail and is pushing hard to win in South Carolina (Which we now know he did win). On Saturday a week ago, he said he would encourage Russia to attack NATO countries that don’t pay their fair share of the NATO budget. Trump, free-forming his stump speech to the emotions of the crowd (as usual), invoked a scenario in which…
Repricing the Universe FIRST TRIP FILLER STORY IN CASE I DON’T KEEP UP About 20 years ago a guy came on the scene in New York City, and he became a bit of a phenomenon. His name was Jimmy McMillan and he coined the expression the “The Rent is Too Damn High!”. He formed a political party with the same name and ran for the Mayor of New York City in 2005 and 2009 and…
The Long Goodbye Today we are in Cambodia, tonight we will be in Bangkok, and tomorrow we will be back on our hilltop. The flight over to Asia took us 32 hours door-to-door with 20 hours of that in the air. The flight east tomorrow will take 15 hours in the air you should require about 22 hours at most door-to-door. But we are really starting our journey back today, so take that into account.…
Angkor What? There are some places that every tourist seems to go or have on their bucket list to go to. Such seems to be the case with Angkor Wat. Last year when we were at Abu Simbel in Southern Egypt, very near the Sudan border and literally at the far reaches of most touristic travels I have made, they had a panorama on the walls of the visitor center that showed the placement of…
Reaping the Whirlwind Today we are heading towards Siem Reap, Cambodia, the city where Angkor Wat is located in the place where over 1 million people once lived 1,000 years ago. When moving from Vietnam to Cambodia, it’s hard not to think back to the history of these lands back when I was moving from school to Wall Street in the 70s. When I think of Cambodia, I think of three things, I think of…